


Under Glass We Are Expected to Blossom

by rm (arem)



Series: Too Soon and Always [10]
Category: Glee
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-07
Updated: 2012-01-07
Packaged: 2017-10-29 02:24:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/314807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arem/pseuds/rm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blaine goes to Shanghai and makes a total hash out of everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under Glass We Are Expected to Blossom

**Author's Note:**

> This story contains a passing mention of rape and violence as well as terrible behavior by Americans abroad.
> 
> Thanks to Lindensphinx, for pointing me towards the poem referenced in the story, and Tsarina, who had to read about twenty different drafts of Blaine's bucket of fail; neither of them are even in this fandom.
> 
> The title is adapted from a line in Elizabeth Bishop's "The Map."

Four days before Blaine's flight, Kurt buys him a bracelet.

As adamant as he's been about Kurt not wearing a ring on _that_ finger if it's not from him, Blaine has also made it clear he doesn't want to be wearing a ring at all until they actually get married, so Kurt has to get creative.

Blaine can barely breathe as they sit by the river, Kurt fastening the imitation Cartier bracelet onto his wrist.

“Any flat-head will work on it,” Kurt says casually, even if he's biting his lip and threading the decorative screwdriver that came with the bracelet onto a chain. “But pretend it won't.”

Blaine nods and presses the bracelet against his arm until it hurts. He will do this, he knows, in Shanghai when things are terrible.

*

Two days before Blaine's flight, when they've had sex and Kurt's tried poorly to hide his too easy tears, he asks if this is what Blaine felt like when he was getting ready to leave for Rome.

Blaine doesn't answer for a long time and eventually shakes his head. “No, I think it's what I felt like once I couldn't see you anymore at the airport. I was fine, or fine enough, and then it was like I'd been punched.” He laughs slightly at himself as he says it.

But Kurt sighs, because Blaine actually knows what that feels like.

*

At airport security with Kurt watching from behind the barrier – all teary and laughing and so proud of him – Blaine volunteers for secondary screening to avoid removing the bracelet, and when he boards his flight he's sure he doesn't feel as bad as when Kurt left him behind.

As he settles into his seat, Blaine pretends he's living in a future where he will have quarterly trips to place like Shanghai, so he pulls a couple of magazines and a sleep mask out of his carry-on and thinks about changing the world.

He will.

One day.

Maybe.

Before they shut the airplane door he sends Kurt a dozen texts. One of them says, _all my futures feature you_.

*

Kurt prefers waiting for Blaine to come home to waiting for him to leave. But even so, having him gone is just _weird_.

The apartment is too quiet and time slips away from him because there is no particular part of the day Kurt looks forward to during classes he's bored with and a commute he hates.

Sometimes he thinks he'll always be waiting for his life to begin, as if a stillness that will never leave his bones infected him during all those miserable years in Ohio before he met Blaine.

*

Blaine reads a handful of articles on the plane that compare Shanghai to Boston, but they make no sense once he arrives. It's not the scale that's all wrong, but the rhythm. The light, too, is different, but that just makes him miss Kurt falling back asleep after they fuck in the mornings; it's become his favorite thing about their junior year.

Standing in a supermarket stymied by unfamiliar options, Blaine knows that when he gets back, they'll have to start making plans around graduation and grad school. But now, as he considers how grateful he is that doesn't have allergies because he can't read _any_ of these labels, he knows, somehow, that they're going to be all right.

He snaps photos of random products with his phone and sends them to Kurt, who replies with simple _yes_ es and _no_ s, as if Blaine is just out at the shop around the corner from their apartment and is asking for Kurt's very strong opinion about goat cheese coated in dried cranberries as opposed to goat cheese coated in fine herbs.

*

Despite his best efforts to actually experience Shanghai, Blaine's Mandarin is crap. The time he spends in Xintiandi, always filled with couples and coffee, makes him lonely in a way he suspects Kurt knows how to do, but that he definitely doesn't. Which is why he keeps winding up going out for drinks with his flatmates, even if he has nothing in common with them except how in over their heads they all feel.

*

The ex-pat drinking culture in Shanghai is, hands down, the most toxic thing Blaine has ever encountered. Any guilt he ever felt in the face of all the New Directions drama in high school or misgivings he's had during he and Kurt's experimentation with any number of substances, doesn't even begin to touch his reaction to what quickly becomes his regular Friday and Saturday nights.

It's not that he's drinking too much, even if maybe he is. It's that he's doing it with people who might actually be truly terrible. And while a lot of the drama is just the usual irresponsibility with hearts and credit cards, there's still one girl in his language intensive who doesn't even hang out with them anymore after an incident that Blaine sure thinks sounds like date rape even if no one but him seems willing to call it that.

As he and his Americans (they aren't _friends_ ) flit between hotel bars and karaoke rooms, drunk and handsy and loud – and everyone they do karaoke with hates him a little because he can actually sing – Blaine feels like there's some decency he's supposed to bring to this mess, but he has no idea how.

*

There are things Kurt has never told Blaine about Rome.

He has never told Blaine how often he and Alex slept in the same bed, holding each other, because she was drunk and he was guttingly lonely.

So when he calls Blaine and finds him hungover, Kurt is gentle in his curiosity.

*

Blaine sends Kurt emails about poetry that apparently doesn't work nearly as well in English as it does it Mandarin. But it is not the patterns of language that entrance Blaine, or even so much the meaning and reasons of the poems. Rather, it is the beauty of being somewhere where history and political discourse – two things he's always loved – never have anything to do with him.

 _I am the light of all the planets_ , he quotes to Kurt, when he tries to explain one of the poems.

*

Kurt finds the rest of the poem on the Internet, and signs his email back with _I am the light of the x-ray_.

Blaine wishes he had anyone there to brag to about all the ways in which his boyfriend is poison and magic.

*

Thomas is blond and broad and the type of guy who would have fit in so easily at Dalton. His parents own a boat; his sister rides horses; and he has come to Shanghai because he knows the center of the world has nothing to do with where he's from, which is Connecticut, unless you mean historically, because his family lived in the Virginia colony before the Revolution.

Blaine learns all this _incredibly_ useless information over a Jaeger bomb at some hotel bar on The Bund. It's touristy as hell, but the prices are higher and the room's a little classier and their coterie seems to think that this means they won't get quite as drunk quite as quickly, even if that's a plan that never really works out.

Blaine learns that Thomas is gay – more or less – over a second Jaeger bomb, when the guy's hand winds up kneading the inside of Blaine's thigh.

“I wouldn't do this if we weren't in a hotel,” Thomas says.

As explanations go, it's bizarre, but Blaine knows what he means. They're all doing this thing where they spend most of their time pretending they're not in Shanghai, which is stupid and shitty, but apparently what Americans in Shanghai do.

Because it's easier than explaining his non-engagement to Kurt, Blaine tells Thomas that he's married. The other man thinks Blaine means to a woman and leans in close, asking if _she's_ why _he's_ run away to China.

“Er, no,” he says, startled as Thomas kisses him.

Blaine pushes him away and goes home alone – guilty and freaked and flattered – but only after they have kissed long enough for Blaine to have moaned into Thomas's mouth.

It happens, more or less like that, three more times before Blaine realizes he _has_ to tell Kurt.

*

“I need to tell you something, and you're not going to like it,” Blaine says as soon as Kurt answers his phone.

Kurt makes a wary, haughty sound in reply.

“Someone kissed me at a party, Kurt. And I kissed back. For a while. A couple of times, and I'm sorry, and it was wrong, and I... god –” Blaine shudders on the exhale. “ _All_ I want is you, but you need to know that this happened.”

“Really?” Kurt says, his voice taut. “I don't see why.”

“Because.... _Jesus_ , Kurt, we said we'd talk about these things.”

“Did you do anything other than kiss?”

“No, but --”

“Nothing that would put our health at risk?”

Blaine bites back a joke about mono. “No.”

“And you weren't into him? You were just drunk and stupid and needing to relive your Rachel Berry Experience just without the sexual confusion?”

“I'm not into him, Kurt,” Blaine says, weary at the fact that they're still somehow talking about _Rachel_.

“Then why are you telling me this?” he snaps.

“Kurt --”

“Be quiet.”

“But --”

“ _Be quiet_ , Blaine! I'm going to hang up the phone, and I'm going take a moment. And then I'm going to call you back, and we're going to talk about this.”

“Of course. I'm so --”

“I'm hanging up now. I'll call you in fifteen minutes.”

Kurt drops his phone onto the bed. “Bastard,” he hisses as he fists a hand and raises it to his mouth before going to sit at his vanity so that he can watch himself cry. None of this is remotely unexpected.

*

“Don't say anything,” Kurt says, when he finally manages to call Blaine back, ten minutes after when he said he would. “I'm furious at you,” he finally manages.

“I just --”

“You just _what_ , Blaine? Felt bad? The only reason you wanted me to know about this is because you _felt bad_. That makes you an asshole.”

“I know,” he says, pressing the bracelet Kurt gave him into his wrist.

Kurt sighs. “You do realize I'm going to forgive you, and everything's going to be fine, right?”

“I don't know anything right now,” Blaine says.

“I don't actually think you're the type to make a habit of this sort of thing,” Kurt says, still watching in the mirror as his ability to endure makes him as beautiful as it always has. “But I don't appreciate your selfish, testing behavior bullshit, and I don't appreciate being told about it _over the phone_ and the only thing I want to do right now is get on a plane and come see you and pet your hair and tell you it's going to be okay. And I'm the one who's supposed to be upset,” He rants. “Now tell me what happened.”

Kurt smiles tightly as his boyfriend obeys. The story is remarkably not terrible for what it is, and Blaine just sounds scared.

“You can't hang out with those people any more,” Kurt declares when Blaine's done. “They're making you unhappy.”

“I know.”

“The dumb things I did in Rome mostly involved hanging out with Americans and not traveling. And they weren't as dumb as this.”

“You had Alex,” Blaine says.

“I also went crazy and didn't speak for two weeks.”

“Point.”

“I'm still freaking out.”

“Are we --”

“ _We_ are fine, Blaine. But I need to talk to someone who isn't you right now.”

“That makes sense.”

“Thank you,” Kurt says, relieved. “Thank you for getting it. Call Wes or something. I'll send you an email tonight, okay?”

“I'm really --”

“I know you're sorry, baby. And I know it's not going to happen again. And I know that you love me, and I'm really glad of all those things, but I need to get off the phone now.” _Before I start crying again_.

“Kurt --”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

*

“Blaine cheated on me,” he says when Mercedes answers, even though he knows it's stupid to tell her because she'll tell everyone they know in common. Still, it's better than calling his father (even though he really, _really_ wants to), who would be angrier with Blaine than Kurt can bear.

“He _what_?”

“Okay. He made out with someone. And stopped himself. _Repeatedly_. And then told me about it.”

“Kurt --”

“Yeah. I know.”

“Are you... what are you going to do?”

“ _Forgive him_. But I hurt, and I'm bored with it already, and I only found out three hours ago. He's so scared, 'Cedes.”

“Aren't you?”

Kurt takes a moment to think about it. “No, actually. Not at all.”

*

Blaine calls Santana.

“Why the fuck are you calling me from China?” she asks, clearly out on her campus somewhere as she shouts to make herself heard over traffic and laughter.

“Because I did something stupid, and you're my friend.”

“Oh my god, did you cheat on Hummel?”

“God, why the fuck did I call you?” Blaine asks, actually laughing slightly.

“You stud, you totally cheated on Hummel!”

“Santana?”

“Yeah?”

“ _Shut up_.”

Santana sits down on the ground near a bus stop, and they talk for over an hour.

*

When word of Blaine's little indiscretion filters to Rachel, she calls Kurt and invites him to visit her in New York. It sounds like such a terrible idea that Kurt says yes.

The night he arrives, she takes him to Brooklyn.

“When you two move to New York, you have to promise me, you'll live here,” she says, terribly serious, as they walk from the subway to the Promenade.

Kurt has no idea where they're going or what she's talking about until they get there, and the whole of the New York skyline is right there in front of him, close enough to touch and barred to him by water.

“Why?” he asks, soft and broken.

“Because if you can see it, you'll always remember why you're here. Sometimes I forget. It's why I'm not happy.”

*

It takes Kurt until Sunday morning to call Wes, and they agree to meet for lunch, alone, before Kurt catches a bus back to Boston.

Wes pulls him into a hug the second he sees him, and it's so unlike him that Kurt finds it slightly terrifying.

“How are you?” Wes asks, setting Kurt away from him.

“I take it you heard,” he says dryly.

“Yeah.”

“We'll be okay,” Kurt says. “He knows that, right?” he adds, his voice nervous and young.

Kurt picks at his omelet while Wes spends most of the meal reassuring him that this is just _one of those Blaine things_ and it will pass and they'll be fine.

But Kurt wonders if that's what Wes thought – that he was _just one of those Blaine things_ – when he first showed up at Dalton.

*

Blaine starts traveling. It's the only way not to wind up with _those_ people in _those_ bars doing _those_ things and airfares within Asia are ridiculously cheap, so he goes to Seoul and Macau and Manila one weekend after another, calling Kurt from airports and parks and the steps of museums.

“Is that weird?” Kurt asks when he's in Manila.

“I don't know,” Blaine says with a laugh. “Should it be? I'm still in the airport.”

“Call your mother,” Kurt says, quiet and stern. “Tell her you're there.”

“You know she hasn't been here since she was like two, right?”

Kurt shrugs. “So?”

Blaine laughs and feels like he can hear Kurt smile down the other end of the line. “So this whole China thing has pretty much been one giant fuck up,” he confesses as he tries to figure out how he's going to get to his hostel.

“I wasn't going to say it. Did you think this was going to make you grow up?” Kurt asks, honestly slightly amused.

“Yeah, actually.”

“Oh, _Blaine_.”

“I know, I _know_!”

“I don't think you do,” Kurt says, laughing in earnest now. “If you've just finally figured out we're kids....”

Blaine laughs. “Holy shit. We are pathetic.”

“A little bit. But I love you anyway,” Kurt says, his voice saccharine. “Even if you did go to China for the apparent sole purpose of avoiding being in China.”

“At least it'll look good on my transcript,” Blaine says with a shrug. His voice is light, but Kurt still knows how disappointed he is in himself.

*

When it's finally time for Blaine to come home, Kurt speeds all the way to Logan, and as he waits at the arrivals gate, he feels giddy.

After everything's that happened, he should be terrified, but he's in love with this man who sits with him at their piano and eats cheesecake with his fingers and makes incredibly bad choices while pretending he's the adult in their relationship because it's his parents who paid for their apartment.

Everything they have done together from the day they met has been hard and poorly planned and slightly dangerous and completely glorious.

So Kurt bounces on his toes as he waits, jumping and calling to Blaine when he finally sees him exit the customs area. He watches, as Blaine sags with something like relief, and whoops when his boyfriend reaches him, drops his bags, and picks Kurt up, arms wrapping around his hips to spin him around.

“You,” Blaine says as he puts Kurt down and then can't manage to say anything else.

*

That night they lay facing each other in bed, naked and with too much space between them, only their feet and hands entwined.

“You're still wearing it,” Blaine says eventually, brushing his thumb over Kurt's ring.

“It was never a question,” he replies, his pinky tugging slightly at Blaine's bracelet as he slides a foot up the boy's calf to pull him closer. “But we don't need to talk about this anymore. At least tonight.”

And when Blaine opens his mouth to protest, Kurt kisses him quiet, gentle and wet.


End file.
